“Come in,” he said. I followed him into the kitchen. It was exactly the same: spotless, streamlined cabinets where you couldn’t tell which was the dishwasher, which was the cereal cupboard and which was the pig bin.
“So!” said Mark, stiffly. “How’s life treating you? Work good?”
“Yes. How’s yours? Work, I mean.”
“Oh good, well, shit actually.” He gave that conspiratorial half smile I so loved.
“Trying and failing to extract Hanza Farzad from the clutches of the king of Kutar.”
“Ah.”
I gazed out at the garden and trees, the leaves beginning to turn, mind racing. I mean my mind, not the trees’ minds. Trees do not have minds: unless you’re the mind of Prince Charles, or perhaps in Daniel Cleaver’s novel. Our whole future rested on these next few babies, I mean moments. I started to rerehearse what I was going to say. It had to be subtle, slowly built up to.
“All caught up with international trade, of course,” Mark was going on. “Always the problem with the Middle East: endless layers of subterfuge, deceit, conflicted interest…”
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?”
There was a pause. “The garden looks lovely,” I eventually said.
“Thank you. Of course, it’s a devil to keep up with the leaves.”
“Yes it must be.”
“Yes.”
“Yup.”
“Mark?”
“Yes, Bridget?”
Oh God, oh God. I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to savour these last few moments when everything seemed like it used to be.
“Is that a conker tree?”
“Yes. It is a conker tree and that one’s a magnolia and…”
“Oh, and what is that one?”
“Bridget!”
“I’m pregnant.”
Mark’s face was a mess of emotions.
“How much, how long, pregnant?”
“Sixteen weeks.”
“The christening?”
“Do you want to feel my bump?”
“Yes.” He put his hand on it briefly, then said, “Excuse me.”
He left the room. I could hear him going upstairs. What was he going to do? Come down with lawsuit papers?